In this post I want to show you what I think it’s the best way to setup VSTS working with Azure Resource Manager Templates.

Introduction

At the customer I am currently working for, we are setting up a new Azure Big Data ingestion environment and we wanted to do it using the Infrastructure as Code approach. With Azure this obviously goes with ARM Templates.

For source control, build and deployment we use Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS).

About VSTS, Build and Release Management

I have seen different setups with VSTS, some of them where the deployment take place from the build, or directly in Release Management without a build.

My approach is to have a clear separation of concerns between the Build and the Release Management.
The Build is for compiling, (Unit) Testing and creating artifacts for the deployment.
The Release Management’s responsibility is for deploying the artifacts created during the Build process. Continue reading “Setting up VSTS with ARM Templates”

When testing deployments of Azure RM resources (ie. using the Test-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment powershell cmdlet) an empty Resource Group is created. This Resource Group is often not needed at this point and can be deleted after you are done testing the deployment of the resources. For deleting the Resource Group you can use the VSTS task delete resource group if empty. This tasks deletes the Resource Group only if it does not contains any resources.